379 Quotes so far…

Acceptance

Action

“If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.” Lemony Snicket

“Trust and proceed.” William Peterson

Adventure

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Helen Keller

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” G.K Chesterton

“When you try to be safe, you live your life being very, very careful, and you may wind up having no life at all.” Byron Katie

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

Alive

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Saint Irenaeus

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“This ain’t no dress rehearsal.” Dave Benjamin

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” Thornton Wilder

“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.” Don Miguel Ruiz“

Amazement

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” Abraham Joshua Heschel

Appreciation

“Appreciation is the magic formula you’ve been seeking.” Abraham Hicks

“Most human beings have almost an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” Aldous Huxley

Astonishment

“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” Annie Dillard

Authenticity

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” Joseph Campbell

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Søren Kierkegaard

“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” Robin Williams

“In order to avoid criticism: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” Norbert Johnson

Attitude

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Victor Frankl

“The greatest discovery of my life is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” William James

Awake

“He who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Carl Jung

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” Thoreau

“We don’t need to change who we are. We just need to awaken to who we are.” Alan Cohen

“We have fallen asleep to ourselves and to our lives.” Don Riso

“When one realizes one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.” Pyotr Uspensky

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent.” John O’Donohue

“Almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everyone you see, everyone you talk to. Only a few people are awake and they live in constant total amazement.” From the Movie “Joe Versus the Volcano”

Aware/Awareness

“The aim of life is to live, and to live is to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” Henry Miller

“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them” Eckhart Tolle

“You are not the voice in your mind, but the one who is aware of it.” Eckhart Tolle

“We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.” Richard Rohr

Beauty

“We do not want merely to see beauty…We want something else that can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” C.S. Lewis

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful for beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In everything which gives us the pure authentic feeling of beauty there really is the presence of God. There is as it were an incarnation of God in the world and it is indicated by beauty.” Simone Weil

Beliefs

“Thoughts become things.” Mike Dooley.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you are right.” Henry Ford

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” Stephen Covey

“You are what you believe yourself to be.” Paolo Coehlo

“If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually.” Thomas Merto

Bliss

“Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.” Joseph Campbell

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.” Joseph Campbell

“I understood how, man who has nothing left in the world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” Viktor Frankl

Change

“To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.” William James

“You don’t have to change. And you can.” WEJ

“When you’re through changing, you’re through.” Bruce Barton

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” Abraham Maslow

“You won’t be worth a damn until you don’t give a damn about the things you can’t do a damn thing about.” Anonymous

Church

“When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.” Abraham Lincoln

“Jesus never asked anyone to form a church, ordain priests, develop elaborate rituals and institutional cultures, and splinter into denominations. His two great requests were that we “love one another as I have loved you” and that we share bread and wine together as an open channel of that interabiding love.” Cynthia Bourgeault

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.” Annie Dillard

“I do not believe that such groups as these (AA) are perfect any more than anything is perfect, but I believe that the church has an enormous amount to learn from them. I also believe that what goes on in them is far closer to what Christ meant his church to be, and what it originally was, than much of what goes on in most churches I know. These groups have no buildings or official leadership or money. They have no rummage sales, no altar guilds, no every-member canvases. They have no preachers, no choirs, no liturgy, no real estate. They have no creeds. They have no programs. They make you wonder if the best thing that could happen to many a church might not be to have its buildings burn down and to lose all its money. Then all that the people would have left would be God and each other.” Frederick Buechner

Create/Creating/Creator/Creation

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw

“Creation is a process that is still happening and we’re in on it! We are a part of this endless creativity of God.” Richard Rohr

“To let life happen to you is irresponsible. To create your day is your divine right.” Ramatha

“The beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us, coming through matter.” Simon Weil

Death

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

“Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.” Buddha

“Bas Sona” (Celtic expression – “May you have a happy death.”) Sacred Art of Living and Dying

“The goal of life is to die young – as late as possible.” Ashley Montagu

“Life is not ended but merely changed.” Catholic Funeral Preface

“Life is a luminous pause between two great mysteries, which themselves are one.” C.G. Jung

Delight

“We change one another through delight and pleasure.” Thomas Aquinas

Dogs

“If I could only be the person my dog thinks I am.” J.W. Stephens

“If I could be half the person my dog is, I’d be twice the human I am.” Charles Yu

“If obedience, unconditional love and loyalty are gonna get you into heaven, there’s going to be a lot more dogs in heaven than people.” Richard Rohr

“We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.” George Eliot

Empathy

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Enjoy

“Enjoy every sandwich.” Warren Zevon.

“It’s not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.” Charles Spurgeon

“Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.” Samuel Butler

“No man is a failure who is enjoying life.” William Feather

Faith

“Faith is not a means to something further. It is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive.” Richard Rohr

Fear

“Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson

“Do not be too timid and squeamish in your actions. All life is an experiment.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson

“If you knew who walks beside you on this path that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.” CIM

“If I wasn’t afraid, what would I do? Live courageously. Do it right now!” WEJ

“I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened.” Mark Twain

Fun

“There is only one rule on this wild playground…’have fun, my dear’ my dear, have fun.'” Hafiz

“In work and in life…we’re supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging.” David Lynch

Genius

“I believe that every man has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity. I believe that mediocrity is self-inflicted and that genius is self-bestowed.” Walter Russell

“I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.” R. Buckminster Fuller

“Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.” George MacDonald

“God is beyond the beyond and beyond that also.” Hindu Scriptures

“How long will grown men and women in this world keep drawing in their coloring books an image of God that makes them sad.” Meister Eckhart

Good/Goodness

“All that is good belongs to you. All that is not has nothing to do with you. ” Alan Cohen

“Yes, there are things in this life that we must endure that are all but unendurable, and yet I feel that there is a great goodness. Why, when there could have been nothing, is there something? How, when there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, beauty?” Jane Kenyon

“There is the bad and there is the good…And then there is crazy good.” Steve Chandler

Grace

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain…sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as though a voice were saying, ‘You are accepted.'” Paul Tillich

“The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.”* D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Gratitude/Gratefulness

“The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see.” Robert Holden.

“”If we saw the world as it really is, we’d be dropping to our knees every five minutes just to say, ‘thank you.'” Ethan Hughes

“Thinking of things you’re grateful for is the easiest meditation. Do this for five minutes. Then ask for anything you want.” James Altucher

“Gratitude is like a magnet; the more grateful you are, the more you will receive to be grateful for.” Iyanla Vanzant

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Meister Eckhart

“If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.” Gerald Good

“When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.” Kristin Armstrong

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” Eckhart Tolle

Happy/Happiness

“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.” Dale Carnegie

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Aristotle

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius

“People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln”

“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” Gautama Buddha

“God’s will for me is perfect happiness.” ACIM

“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.” Audrey Hepburn

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.” Henry Ward Beecher

“Every since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.” Hafiz

“Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.” Francesca Reigler

“The most revolutionary act one can commit in this world is to be happy.” Patch Adams

Healing

“The wish to be well is part of becoming well.” Seneca

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

Heart

“What is essential is invisible to the eye. Only with the heart can one see rightly.” Antoine de Saint Exupery

“When you speak from your heart, everyone listens because God is speaking.” Anonymous

Holy

“Everything is holy now.” Peter Mayer

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Hope

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” Rumi

Humor

“Humor is the prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.” Anne Wilson Schaef

Identity

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” Hafiz

“Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.” Søren Kierkegaard

“What you go through is nothing compared to who you are.” Alan Cohen

“‘There is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch.’ (Meister Eckhart) And I really thought that was amazing, and if you cash it out, what it means is, that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.” John O’Donohue

“Your life is a series of lessons in becoming yourself.” Alan Cohen

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.” Robert Louis Stevenson

“You must learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond the ego. It is fearless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and enchantment.” Deepak Chopra

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” Carl Jung

“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas,at the long course of the rivers,at the vast compass of the ocean,at the circular motion of the stars,and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. ” Saint Augustine of Hippo

“God has entrusted me with myself.” Epictetus

“Now all that is left is for you to become yourself.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Elizabeth Appell

“We are all reflections of the invisible God (Genesis 1:27). And our only way to know God is through this humanity. This is our only road to a little enlightenment.” Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know

“Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower.” Richard Rohr

“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.” C Assaad

“Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Chrisopher Robin (A.A. Milne)

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss

“Quit trying to improve yourself and recognize your shining self that is whole, perfect, and complete right now.” Alan Cohen

“There are no common people.” Wallace Wattles.

“Getting to know who you really are is the adventure of a lifetime… take it.” Mark Januzewski

“”Love allows you to transcend the great fear, the great suffering that comes form a temporary, mistaken identity problem.” The Way of Mastery

“Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cuz you’re really a yawn if it goes.” Bette Midler

“You have been taught that there is something wrong with you and that you are imperfect, but there isn’t and you’re not.” Cheri Huber

“O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.” Macrina Wiederkehr

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde

“May we free ourselves, from ourselves, so we can be ourselves.” Rabbi Brian

Jesus

“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” Albert Schweitzer

Kindness

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” William Wordsworth

“Kindness is the highest form of intelligence.” Wayne Teasdale

“Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.” King Solomon

“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do for any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” William Penn

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” Og Mandino

“Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.” Henri Frederic Amiel

“You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.” Publilius Syrus

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Philo

“Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing.” Rumi

Laughter

“When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” Buddha

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.” Mark Twain

“If I ever had to create tenets for a spiritual path to healing, number one on my list would be to make sure to laugh as often as possible.” Anita Moorjani

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” Victor Hugo

“We do not stop laughing becasue we grow old. We grow old becasue we stop laughing.” Anonymous

“Humor is the prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“What soap is to be the body, laughter is to the soul.” Yiddish Proverb

“Take time to laugh. It is the music of the soul.” Irish Prayer

“If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.” Robert Frost

“Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.” Charlie Chaplin

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.” George Gordon Byron

“A sense of humor … is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.” Hugh Sidey

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” Kurt Vonnegut

“Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.” Bob Newhart

Life

“We have fallen asleep to ourselves and to our lives.” (Wisdom of the Enneagram p.29).

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” Joseph Campbell

“It’s not the length of life, but depth of life.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” Søren Kierkegaard

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Anonymous

“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life…” Deuteronomy 30:19

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” Arthur Rubinstein

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” Abraham Lincoln

“If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” Aart Van Der Leeuw

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

“Life isn’t happening to you; life is responding to you.” Rhonda Byrne

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” Rumi

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” Hunter S. Thompson

“You better have fun. Because you’re going to be gone in a minute.” Jamie Foxx

“One day this will be 20 years ago.” Bill Bryson

“Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” Jack Kerouac

“Feast on your life.” Derek Walcott

“Life is a church.” Marcus Hummon

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver

“The good life starts only when you stop wanting a better one.” Bertrand Russell

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Live/Living

“May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more.” John O’Donohue

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” Thoreau

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mark Twain

“Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday’s defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, If I had my life to live over again. Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” Og Mandino

“May you live all the days of your life.” Jonathan Swift

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Norman Cousins

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” Emily Dickinson

“Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” Thorton Wilder (Our Town)

“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.” Voltaire

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…” Henry David Thoreau

“The more you live, the less you die.” Unknown

“Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” Benjamin Franklin

“I guess it comes down a simple choice: Get busy living, or get busy dying.” (Andy Dufresne to Red in Shawshank Redemption.)

Love

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses (and princes) who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“And we are put on this earth a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” William Blake

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.” Marianne Williamson

“To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” Emily Dickinson

“I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love.” Tolstoy

“Where there is love there is life.” Mahatma Gandhi

“For each, our task is to re-member: to reestablish and reclaim that which is already true. We are loved, and we have always been loved. It is not a question of merit or accomplishment. The Divine Love is here. We need only unclench, our fists and open to it.” Jeanette Berson

“The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” Julian of Norwich.

“Dear Human: You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often. You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering.” Courtney Walsh

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” Gautama Buddha

“Don’t forget to love yourself.” Soren Kierkegaard

“This revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.” Tara Brach

The challenge of this life is not to stay alive. The challenge of this life is stay in love. Chris Rankin-Willians

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

“You are not in need of self help; you are in need of self love.” Amy B. Scher

“There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.” Lord Byron

“You know quite well, deep within you,that there is only a single magic, single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving.” Herman Hesse

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved — what then?” Carl Jung

“Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.” Karl Menninger

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.” Bertrand Russell

“All shall be well. For there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go.” Julian of Norwich

Meaning

“What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about?” Annonymous

Meditation

“Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation.” Jonathan Haidt

Miracle

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

“To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.” Walt Whitman

“Accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” Storm Jameson

“Miracles happen all the time. People just fail to notice them.” Lorna Byrne

Misery

“Misery has enough company. Dare to be happy.” Volkswagon Ad

“We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.” Francesca Reigler

Mistakes

“Mistakes make the best stories.” WEJ

Money

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” Oscar Wilde

Mystery

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein

Nature

“My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.” Michelangelo

Now

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” Ayn Rand

“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.” Paulo Coelho

Optimism

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian of Norwich

“All the way to heaven, is heaven.” Catherine of Sienna

“1000 things went right today.” (Anonymous)

“No one knows enough to be a pessimist.” Wayne Dyer

Pleasure

“When you die, God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.” Roger Housden

“Pleasure is spread through the earth in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.” William Wordsworth

Poetry

“I see poetry as spiritual medicine.” Mahmoud Darwish

“The poet’s job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.” Jane Kenyon

“Should I get lost, just point me in the direction of a poem.” Betty Bleen

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down for the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” Mary Oliver

Power

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson

“It’s powerful to realize that I am more powerful than I realize.” WEJ

“What lies behind you, and what lies before you, pale in comparison to what lies within you.” Ralph Waldo Emmerson

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to Heaven.” William Shakespeare

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? We should all be wearing crash helmets….life preservers and signal flares.” Annie Dillard

Possibilities

“I dwell in possibility.” Emily Dickinson

“Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.” Gian Carlo Menotti

Present

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

“Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. Peace is all around us – in the world and in nature – and within us – in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice. We need only to find ways to bring our body and mind back to the present moment so we can touch what is refreshing, healing, and wondrous.” Thich Nhat Hanh

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.” Eckhart Tolle

“Do not allow taking a photograph to be a substitute for the glory of the moment. What we capture in our hearts lasts forever.” Alan Cohen

Purpose

“There is no purpose for your life greater than to recognize your own beauty, power, and worth, and to share it.” Alan Cohen

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” Robert Byrne

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

“Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution – a melding into the godhead, into love – is our true task.” Tom Robbins

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” Pablo Picasso

“Spend you life doing strange things with weird people.” Jerome Jarre

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Carl Jung

Religion

“Jesus calls us, not to a new religion, but life.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Religion is as much a progressive unlearning of false ideas concerning God as it is the learning of the true ideas concerning God. ” Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

“When I have a terrible need of – dare I say, ‘religion’? – then I go outside at night and paint the stars.” Vincent Van Gogh

“Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.” Richard Rohr

“Vital religion cannot be maintained and preserved on the theory that God dealt with our human race only in the far past ages, and that the Bible is the only evidence we have that our God is a living, revealing, communicating God. If God ever spoke, God is still speaking… God is the Great I Am, not a Great I Was…” Quaker Rufus Jones

“Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” James 1:27

“The great religions are the ships. The poets the lifeboats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.” Hafiz

“The good news that Jesus proclaimed is not an evacuation plan for heaven but a transformation plan for humanity on earth.” Brian Mclaren

“Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems – that it never did work and it never will.” Robert F. Capon

Sacred

“The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.” Sam Keen

“You are not sick, you’re sacred.” Barbara Angelis

“The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.” Sam Keen

“By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.” Teilhard de Chardin

Self

“The doors to the world of the Wild Self are few, but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery.” Matthew Arnold

Seriousness

“Life is too important to take seriously.” Oscar Wilde

“Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely…For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G.K. Chesterton

Teaching/Learning

“Good teaching is one fourth preparation and three fourths theatre.” Gail Godwin

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thoughts

“Your real enemies are the self-defeating thoughts, paltry expectations, and beliefs that you must live at less than full throttle. You will experience as much pain as you are willing to accept. You do have control over how much you hurt. Pain happens; suffering is optional. You can choose thoughts that bring you relief rather than imprisonment. To find your freedom, stand at the doorway of your mind and monitor your thoughts. Notice which ones lift you and which ones drag you down. Then, like a bouncer at an exclusive party, admit only those on the invitation list and send the others back where they came from. Fate is not a net cast over you by capricious fortune; it is a garden you cultivate by the thoughts you attend to. Shift your attention and you will shift your life.” Alan Cohen

“All humans have OCD of the mind.” Richard Rohr

“Very little is needed to make a happy life it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” Marcus Aurelius

“We find what we look for.” Toni Powell

True Self

“The great mystics of all traditions teach us that the spiritual life is not really about consolation; it is about annihilation. It is about allowing the small self, which suffers from the illusion of separation from God, to burn in the flames of transformation so that True Self may emerge.” Mirabai Starr, Emancipation

“To boldly come out from hiding and offer our truest selves to the world. This is the work of the spiritual journey.” Chris and Phileena Heuertz (Oneing)

Trust

“The choice to trust that everything is working out perfectly is what allows everything to work out perfectly.” Stewart Blackburn

“Trust what moves you most deeply.” Sam Keen

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.” Sufi Prayer

Victim (Overcoming a Victim Mentality)

“Although the mind resists it, the fact is that like me, you have a choice between having the life you want or the reasons why you can’t. You can luxuriate in joy and peace, or you can continually be burdened by that big black bag full of all the sorrowful incidents and accidents that happened to you in your childhood or last relationship. You can endure your wounds or you can enjoy your glory. You can live the life of a victim, burdened by the traumas of your past, or you can live the life of a hero, but you can’t do both. If you want to feel empowered, you need to make a courageous decision to create a sacred dream and practice courage.” Alberto Villoldo

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“What other people think of you is none of your business!” Paulo Coelho

Vitality

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” Martha Graham

“The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.” Joseph Campbell

Vocation

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Albert Camus

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner

“When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.” W. Clement Stone

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the beleif that one’s work is terribly important.” Bertrand Russell

Wow

“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” (Steve Jobs – last words before he died)

Yes

“Yes is a world and in this world of yes live (skillfully curled) all worlds.” e.e. cummings

“For all that has been, ‘thank you.’ For all that is to come, ‘yes.’” Dag Hammarskjold

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!” Richard Branson

“All you ever longed for is before you in this moment. If you dare draw in a breath and whisper ‘Yes.'” Danna Faulds

“The only question is whether you are going to say yes to your great adventure.” Joseph Campbell

“I’m no longer sure what the question is, but I do know the answer is yes.” Leonard Bernstein